The British Royal Family and the Making of the War-Time Anglo-American Relationship

Abstract

This chapter is in many ways a framing or ‘origins’ chapter but importantly, it works to contextualise and explain the attitudes of the republican entity that constituted the United States of America towards the British monarchy. It argues that the evolution of the relationship, and a growing respect for the institution in Britain, helped to significantly influence the positive nature of US relations with monarchical European powers, especially Britain. This casts a fresh light on what are often presumed to be American attitudes both during the Great War and afterwards, particularly during the post-war settlement. A longe durée perspective is deliberately taken, demonstrating the ways in which the changing relationship of the United States and the British monarchy amounted to an important component in the ‘atmospherics’ between the countries during the previous century. The monarchy played a key part, and one that was remembered, in what Dexter Perkins termed ‘the Great Rapprochement’ between Britain and the United States. It was this monarchical contribution, including its wider cultural impact on the American public, which made possible their ultimate collaboration during and after the Great War. In the early twentieth century the warming of relations with the United States was an important part of the foreign policy of Edward VII. Particular attention will be given to the growth in trans-Atlantic commemorations with a royal dimension, which grew throughout this period. The state visit of President Woodrow Wilson at the end of the Great War is revealed to symbolise the tensions in the relationship, but also the long-standing durability of the bonds between the two great English-speaking states.